Going On The Account: Getting Back Aboard

Well, it’s 2013, and only a few days away from the fifth anniversary of this blog.

 

But more on that closer to the date; right now I’m just trying to prove that yeah, I’m still here.  I did sort of let the whole Blogtober stunt serve as an excuse to phone it in last month, between all the other stuff going on.  And trying to do a whole host of things we wanted to do, much else occurred.  Who was it who talked about life being what happens while you’re busy making other plans…?

Oh yeah, him:

 

 

Anyways, in the midst of a lot of other things, there was Newtown.

 

Which was a problem for a while, in that I continually craft pieces with nasty characters in threatening situations.  I talked about this a while ago, at a time when we didn’t have the images from that Friday burned in our retinas and a wall of concept kept us far enough away from a reality of pain to allow for writing about characters with guns that casually.

So what happens when you have a moment of doubt about your work?

I’d be lying if I said that what happened at that school didn’t give me pause.  Writing people who carry and use in a setting where they could be in a firefight at any minute was not something I wanted to work on after that.  Even Aurora didn’t give me the same pause that newton did, although I did wait a week before going to see THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.

 

But there’s the counter-argument, that only by confronting the uncomfortable can we move ahead.  If I’d been so sensitive that I couldn’t write in the face of such a confrontation, I’d have been offline until a few weeks after the last of the people I knew who lost power below 34th Street got service restored.  Hell, if I’d been that taken aback, I’d still be on the sidelines until the South Ferry subway station got reopened, which may take a while at this point…
There’s also the point that part of the focus of the work is portraying a dark future in an unflattering light.  I went back over what’s been posted so far, and I can say with little fear that I don’t exactly celebrate the thug-and-pirate life.  I’d feel damned miserable if up until now I’d been doing this Frank Miller/Mickey Spillane-themed celebration of life looking down the barrel, then had to keep serving drinks to that party.  These are not what I’d call fun times to inhabit, and it keeps me focused knowing that I came to bury this time our children will know better, not praise it…

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And yes, focus is an issue; in addition to all this, there’s some fatigue setting in.  I have projects I’d love to start in on, which have to wait until this commitment is finished.  Hey, you’ve been willing to put up with me this long; least I can do is get to the point already, which a few folks I know accuse me of never doing…

In any event, I do owe those of you still here the rest of the novel before I go on to a few other projects.  Some projects are longer, very involved and may just drive people into fits of frustration; others are short bits that might be monetize-able if I can get an editor or two to see what I see in the piece.

Or I could go fully alone on the short side; I just found out today that a favorite piece from the old Tor collection,  Alternate Kennedys, is being made available by the writer directly through Kindle.  David Gerrold’s “The Kennedy Enterprise” is a great story that assumes that Joe Kennedy went to Hollywood to pursue a deeper relationship with Gloria Swanson, and brings the boys with him, putting Jack in command of a very famous spaceship on TV…  Major classic, well worth the read, especially at only $1.39 to download.  And if the other project works out well-

You know, the other project, the one I talked about a few weeks ago…

Yes, if that pans out, who knows, maybe I could rethink how I present short pieces, the same way I rethought novels.  Oh brave new world, he said on a Shakespeare kick…

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New, and hotter; the US had a record hot streak, as did Australia last year.  If the guns don’t get ya, the heat will…

And no, I don’t remember who was responsible for that quote I mangled…